The leader of UNITA's parliamentary group, Liberty Chiaka, welcomed this Wednesday the injunction requesting the suspension of the selection by the Superior Council of the Judiciary of Manuel da Silva as president of the CNE.
According to Liberty Chiaka, "since the National Assembly is the stage where the investiture of the president of the CNE should take place", UNITA "draws attention to the risk" of the process.
The UNITA deputy said in a press conference that with the injunction sent on 24 January to the judges of the Civil, Administrative, Customs and Fiscal Chamber of the Supreme Court, it is intended that Manuel Pereira da Silva 'Manico' will not take office before the National Assembly.
The facts date from 25 February 2019, when the plenary of the Superior Council of the Judiciary (CSMJ) opened the curricular competition to fill the posts of president of the CNE and president of the provincial and municipal electoral commissions.
UNITA complains that in defining the criteria for assessing the profile of candidates, the CSMJ "did not include or value the moral and civic suitability of candidates or their probity as objective criteria".
According to UNITA, "the rules for evaluating the candidates were altered, biased and corrupted in the middle of the process, and were not fully observed by those who instituted them".
"For this reason, there were complaints, protests and legitimate appeals," said Liberty Chiaka, noting that the candidates were evaluated by an 'ad hoc' body of the CSMJ (the jury), whose president was not, at the time of the facts, a member of the CSMJ.
The second largest political force in the country also claims that the candidates, who were already members of the CNE, were not evaluated or valued on the basis of their performance.
According to UNITA, after three months, on 15 May 2019, the jury of the curricular competition for the post of president of the CNE approved the definitive list of four candidates admitted, namely Agostinho António dos Santos, Avelino Yululu, Manuel Pereira da Silva, and Sebastião Jorge Diogo Bessa.
Meanwhile, an injunction requested by the candidate Agostinho dos Santos against the admission of Manuel Pereira da Silva led to the suspension of the competition.
Agostinho dos Santos claimed he wanted to ensure respect for the law, taking into account that under the principle of mandate limitation, Manuel Pereira da Silva had already been linked to CNE as electoral commissioner for more than 15 years and article 8 of the Organic Law on Elections provides for members of CNE only a five-year term of office, renewable once.
According to the injunction, Manuel Pereira da Silva took office as electoral commissioner on 7 October 2005 and to date has been continuously working for the Provincial Electoral Commission of Luanda.
According to UNITA, Manuel Pereira da Silva should have left the CNE almost five years ago.
"As if that were not enough, Manuel Pereira da Silva, as a candidate, proceeded in the process to merge extemporaneously a 'doctoral defence minute' instead of a certificate as per the terms of the contest regulations," said the leader of UNITA's parliamentary group.
For UNITA, this is not merely a confrontation between public interests, on the one hand, and private or partisan interests limited to the legal sphere of the defendant and the applicant, on the other, but rather the sole and simple public interest of safeguarding the credibility, reliability and image of state institutions".
